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$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'Unscientific',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2019/02/17.jpg" alt="Urban trees" class="framed-centred-image" width="649" height="480"/>
<section id="religion">
	<h2>Religion</h2>
	<p>
		Not a whole lot at church caught my attention today.
		Most of it was stuff I&apos;m already seeing as <a href="/en/religion/scripture/Mormon.xhtml">I read the Book of Mormon</a> or the stuff the Mormons seem to believe even though it contradicts the Book of Mormon.
		One thing said though was &quot;Happiness is the object and design of our existence.&quot;.
		First of all, if Jehovah created us for us to be happy, why do we have to submit to bizarre demands to achieve that happiness eternally?
		Let&apos;s ignore for a moment the effects of how we live our lives on our personal eternities, as the Mormons believe we&apos;ll go to one of several heavens, and thus live in different degrees of happiness regardless.
		The Mormons believe that one third of us will never even make it to earth to claim bodies, and have thus been cast into the &quot;outer darkness&quot;.
		If the purpose in creating us was for us to be happy, why would he create those of us that would choose eternal misery?
		I mean, he&apos;s supposedly all-knowing and all-powerful.
		He deliberately created each of us, knowing what would become of us if he did.
		No, the purpose of our existence cannot be and is not our own happiness.
		From what the Book of Mormon teaches - at least the part I&apos;ve finished reading so far - our purpose seems to be to obey.
	</p>
	<p>
		Being an atheist, I of course don&apos;t believe Jehovah exists, let alone created us.
		I don&apos;t think we were all created by the same entities, even.
		Rather, our parents created us.
		Each and every one of us have two creators, and our creators had various purposes for us.
		I don&apos;t know why my mother crated me.
		She wanted seven children, though she stopped at four because the fifth pregnancy (fourth child, as there was a miscarriage near the beginning) nearly killed her.
		I guess she thought it&apos;d be fun to be the mother of a large family or something, but none of us turned out the way she wanted us to.
		My father created me because my mother wanted a child.
		(I was the first, so at that time, she had none.)
		Some people create more people because they think a baby will solve their relationship problems.
		Others do it for the approval of their own parents.
		Still more are created just by accident.
		There are a multitude of reasons each of us may have been created, but there&apos;s one thing we have in common: we weren&apos;t created for our own happiness, or even our own misery.
		Our parents may or may not want happiness for us, but that&apos;s not what we&apos;re here for.
		In fact, happiness is a survival trait.
		Things that are good for our survival tend to make us happy, while things that are detrimental make us suffer.
		Those that enjoyed the things that were good for them survived and passed on the tendencies to feel that way about those things, while those that liked the things that killed them dies before reproducing.
		Emotions are a sort of instinct.
		Due to flaws in our make, and the fact that we&apos;re no longer in our natural environment, things don&apos;t always make us feel the way we should along those lines.
		I mean, eating large quantities of fattening food might make one happy, even though that&apos;s not good for one&apos;s health, but it&apos;s likely a remnant from when fat was difficult to come by, and getting enough was difficult.
		However, our feelings an emotions, such as happiness, are merely a way for us to gage what&apos;s going on and spur us to try to improve our chances of surviving and passing on our genes.
		Even if there was some divine reason for us to be here, happiness would only be a product of that.
		Happiness happens when we do what we need to have done.
	</p>
	<p>
		Two weeks ago - the first time I attended a meeting at this church - we had a lesson after the main service.
		Everyone had brought these workbooks they&apos;d been working on at home, that help direct your study of the scriptures, and they talked about what they&apos;d learned.
		Apparently, these lessons happen every other week.
		They were out of workbooks at the time.
		This week, I was able to get one myself, so this should be interesting.
		I&apos;m doing my own studying of the Book of Mormon on my own, but now I&apos;ll also work on the lessons that&apos;ll keep me on the same page as the rest of the group.
		It might help me gain some new perspectives.
	</p>
	<p>
		Later, at work, I was thinking about what I&apos;d heard at church today, and it dawned on me what the theme of this week&apos;s service really was.
		They kept talking about how important it is to have a testimony.
		They said it wasn&apos;t about trying to convince other people, but about keeping the faith no matter how hard it is to do so.
		They said having a testimony helps with that.
		You&apos;ll be faced with a bunch of arguments against religion or against this particular religion.
		You&apos;ll be able to argue against many of the points people make, but eventually, there&apos;ll be a time when you don&apos;t have the answers needed to prove Mormonism correct.
		All you&apos;ll have to go by is faith.
		And if you have a testimony, you&apos;ll have that to lean on.
		I guess this thought process is just <strong>*so*</strong> unscientific and <strong>*so*</strong> illogical that I just didn&apos;t grasp it right away.
		It&apos;s about holding onto something you believe in and never letting go, no matter how much evidence against your beliefs there is.
		That&apos;s <strong>*terrible*</strong> advice!
		But it explains why the most religious people are so adamant about their beliefs.
		They&apos;re taught to hold on, even past the point there&apos;s anything left to hold onto.
		Such blind following is exactly what they think is one of the best qualities to have.
		It&apos;s a quality I&apos;d appal in myself though.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="drudgery">
	<h2>Drudgery</h2>
	<p>
		My discussion post for the day:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			In a linear equation, a dependant variable isn&apos;t the past data.
			Rather, it&apos;s the variables you set in order to solve for the dependant variable.
			The independent variables are what you plug in, while the dependant variable is your result.
			Like in your example, the independent variable would be age and the dependent variable would be productivity, but that&apos;s not only the ages used in the training data.
			Ages of people you&apos;re trying to predict the productivity of would still be considered the independent variable, because it doesn&apos;t depend on the dependant variable.
			That is, one&apos;s age doesn&apos;t change based on their level of productivity.
		</p>
		<p>
			I like how you explained the range issue.
			I don&apos;t think I explained it nearly as well, myself.
			You also included the fact that you can over-fit your model to your training data, which was something I hadn&apos;t thought to include myself.
			Great job!
		</p>
	</blockquote>
</section>
<section id="work">
	<h2>Work</h2>
	<p>
		Ever since that one day I had not working the drive-through, I&apos;ve been made work the drive-through on every one of my shifts.
		Why did the boss even ask if I&apos;m tired of it if I&apos;m going to be stuck on it all the time anyway?
	</p>
	<p>
		So anyway, I mentioned before that I&apos;ve stopped up-selling.
		If the boss can&apos;t even stand up for their employees when they know they&apos;re doing the right thing, and instead just rips me a new one every time a customer throws a tantrum, I&apos;m already under way more stress than I need to be.
		And pushing extra products on customers that don&apos;t want them adds stress too.
		That stress is part of my job, but the boss ripping me a new one all the time isn&apos;t.
		So if I&apos;m stuck dealing with one, I&apos;m not going to deal with the other.
		Today, it occurred to me though that I can artificially reduce my average order price.
		I can sabotage myself to make it look like I&apos;m doing terribly at running the drive-through.
		All I have to do is split up orders more.
		I&apos;m normally very careful, and don&apos;t finalise orders until I&apos;m almost certain the customer is not going to tack more on.
		For some reason, customers can&apos;t figure out what they want, and add more after they&apos;ve claimed to be done ordering.
		However, I can instead finalise orders as soon as the customers say they&apos;re done ordering.
		I&apos;ll end up with a bunch of stupid, tiny orders of the little things they tack on later.
		The store&apos;ll still bring in the same amount of money, but the record will show there being many more customers than there were, lowering my average order price.
		If the boss is paying attention, I might get put somewhere else and not on the drive-through window.
	</p>
	<p>
		Speaking of sabotaging myself, I accidentally took a counterfeit ten-dollar bill today.
		I wasn&apos;t paying attention, and I handed out their food, so they left.
		When I went to put the ten into the register though, I noticed it wasn&apos;t real.
		That was embarrassing.
		I can spot fake money if I&apos;m looking directly at it, even if I&apos;m not trying to check it.
		I mean, for whatever reason, counterfeit money seems to be quite terribly made.
		Anyone with any competence and any familiarity with the local currency should be able to spot the difference without even trying.
		Which means, of course, if I got caught accepting the fake ten, I&apos;d be thought incompetent.
		That was more than I could take.
		Even if it helped me get off the drive-through, I&apos;ve got a reputation to uphold.
		So while the boss was looking, I swapped ten one-dollar bills from my wallet into the register and moved the fake ten to my tip jar.
		Then when the boss <strong>*wasn&apos;t*</strong> looking, I took the fake money to my purse in the back, where it wouldnt&apos; get seen.
		So I guess I&apos;m out ten bucks.
		That&apos;s what I get for not paying attention, I guess.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="credit">
	<h2>Credit card</h2>
	<p>
		I received an offer for a credit card in the mail yesterday.
		Most of the offers I get are from this one company that maliciously blocks $a[Tor] users on their website, and asks you to apply online.
		This one was from another company though.
		I thought I&apos;d remembered getting an offer from them before and finding they maliciously block $a[Tor] users too, but I doubled checked just in case.
		They ...didn&apos;t seem to block me.
		I&apos;d have to try to apply to know for sure though, as there are some companies that let you look at their website, but don&apos;t accept any information you enter into it if they don&apos;t like your $a[IP] address.
		I didn&apos;t have time for that then though.
	</p>
	<p>
		I wouldn&apos;t mind having the card though to help me build credit, so I applied for it today.
		Everything went fine, aside from the fact they demanded a telephone number.
		I tried entering all zeros, and they didn&apos;t like that.
		So I changed the last digit to a one.
		And that worked.
		Clearly, they thought of the possibility of someone zeroing out the telephone number field, but didn&apos;t think someone would have even the tiny amount of creativity it&apos;d take to enter nine zeroes and one of some other digit.
		Or they didn&apos;t even think of that possibility themselves.
		Wow.
		It doesn&apos;t take much brain power to change one digit.
	</p>
	<p>
		Anyway, what I first found interesting about this company though is that they asked for both your legal name <strong>*and*</strong> the name you want on the card.
		Nice!
		You get to pick what name you want on the card.
		I don&apos;t know of any other company that allows that.
		I thought for several minutes, but I came up with nothing.
		The simple fact is that I already <strong>*did*</strong> pick my own name.
		In court.
		And now I can have that name on all my cards, and even on my photo $a[ID].
		So what name would I want on my card instead?
		Yeah, so I just chose to go with the legal name I picked myself years ago.
		A bit later, the website offered me the option to have a second card issued under another name, intended for another user.
		The name field was mandatory, and there were optional fields for the user&apos;s email address, Social Security Number, and ...
		I forget the last field.
		It might have been their telephone number or something.
		All that was optional though, aside from the name to put on the card.
		Just like it should be.
		I thought a while about what name to put on the card.
		What fake name would I want to use sometimes?
		None.
		Darn.
		A lost opportunity.
		So I passed on the secondary card.
		There&apos;s only one time I&apos;d want to use a fake name when making a purchase, and that&apos;d be when setting up and paying for mobile service.
		Don&apos;t want that traced back to me.
		But I can&apos;t use a credit card for that either, because then the card company knows I&apos;m paying for service.
		They wouldn&apos;t realise it was tablet service and not telephone service, so I&apos;d risk them pestering me to get the number, even though it wouldn&apos;t exist.
		For mobile service, I&apos;ve got to go cash only.
		If the site allowed punctuation in the names, I&apos;d&apos;ve gone with &quot;Alexand(erra) Yst&quot; but as that wasn&apos;t an option, there&apos;s only one name I&apos;d really use.
	</p>
</section>
END
);
